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THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL PANCAKESby David S. Atkinson

Don’t you hate it when you may (or may not) be trapped endlessly in a Village Inn with your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend, coincidentally your ex-best friend? That’s the kind of day Cassandra is having. In a homogenized world that is left mostly empty so everyone can feel comfortable, The Garden of Good and Evil Pancakes explores the fictions we tell ourselves and the fictions we tell ourselves about the fictions we tell ourselves.

GREAT DIVIDEby Emily Kiernan

Great Divide is a novel about memory, the power of the past to shape and subsume the present, and the pressing, terrible need to escape the drowning force of history. The reader inhabits the conflicted and mercurial interior of Jane, a young woman fleeing from years of abuse in her Oregon seacoast home to an uncertain freedom with her boyfriend in the landlocked new world of the Kansas plains. As Jane travels, her progress is threatened by nostalgia and attachment, responsibility and ambivalence, and, finally, by a massive flood which threatens to overwhelm both her past and her future. Great Divide is a novel precariously afloat atop a sea of time, at once alluring and threatening, beckoning us to dive in.

BEYOND FOLLYby Emil DeAndreis

Welcome to the wonderful world of public education, as seen through the eyes of seasoned substitute teacher, Horton Hagardy. It's a time you might recall with great fondness if you were a student—a day to escape the oppressive existence of your everyday tormentors. If you're a substitute, however, these dark, funny, and often poignant stories, take you to a very real place. In Emil DeAndreis's new book, Beyond Folly, we are on the front lines of the education system, in the trenches, so to speak, of what it feels like to face the everyday challenges of being a teacher on call. These thoughtful and insightful linked-together tales give the reader a behind-the-scenes peek into the life and mind of a substitute teacher, an isolated, underpaid, and underappreciated professional.

THE ARBITRARY SIGNby Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Reviewed as “charming and lively” by Darian Leader, The Arbitrary Sign is a playful stab at the quintessential alphabet book, asking questions about meaning through the gaze of the continental philosopher. You’ll encounter Lacan, Derrida and Deleuze, all placed in conversation with each other. The age-old format is elevated into something more esoteric—the connoisseur’s poetic aperitif, if you may. Bryan Borland writes of this book: “These poems are confessional in the most unique of ways, beyond the public, underneath the personal. They tap into a universal vein, the voice that comes when we allow ourselves to observe ourselves. The result is transcendent.”

A BREACH IN DEATHby Matt Thomas

Arc is a new grim reaper, and his first day on the job doesn’t go according to plan. Arc dies. He still had a debt to pay and this was to be his penance. Soon though, Arc and his fellow reaper Lucy, a guide on his journey into the underworld, learn that something—or someone—has upset the balance between life and death in a way that threatens us all.

THE TUXEDOED CORPSEby Henry F. Tonn

Chief detective Bumpy Morris of the Wilmington, North Carolina Police Department is called early in the morning to inspect a shallow grave that has been discovered at a local park. It contains an elderly-looking man with long, gray hair wearing a dark tuxedo and clutching a German Luger in his lap. The man's right arm is held stiffly upward with the index finger pointing straight into the air. Checking the corpse for identification, Bumpy discovers that this man was his college roommate forty years ago. In the ensuing investigation, he finds himself traveling to areas of the city he would not have expected, and being confronted by friends and acquaintances from his own past. It eventually becomes obvious that the solution to the case will lie in unraveling the eccentric personality and bizarre lifestyle of his ex-roommate, one that the roommate adopted many years ago.Also available on iTunes.

THE BEST FICTION & NONFICTION OF 2012

This book collects most of the fiction and nonfiction work published on our site during 2012. A great selection of work from some very talented writers. Don't miss out.

THE BEST POETRY OF 2012

A collection of the best poetry work published on our site during 2012. Some amazing new work from some very talented people. Don't miss it.

THE WRITING DISORDER ANTHOLOGYVolume II

This book collects most of the fiction, poetry, and nonfiction work published on our site during 2011. A great selection of work from some very talented writers. Don't miss out.

WHERE YOU AREby Michael Burns

“I can’t take it anymore. Love, L” writes Paul Embry’s wife of less than a year on the envelope of an electric bill. Thus begins the
late summer and fall of Paul’s discontent as he struggles to come to grips with his feelings that this act of his young wife generates.

RESETTING THE ARMAGEDDON CLOCKby Matt Thomas

In a bid to impress a woman, a scientist unwittingly pushes the world to the brink of destruction when he sets the Armageddon clock at one-minute to midnight. A short story.

THE PHYSICS OF IMAGINARY OBJECTSby Tina May Hall

This enigmatic collection by Hall comprises curious musings on the convergence of the natural and human worlds. Many of these selections have quirky titles that deliver atmospheric, dreamlike stories sure to fascinate.—Publishers Weekly

CATCH HER IN THE RYEby Wodke Hawkinson

Catch Her in the Rye offers a cross-genre reading experience with its variety of tales, each different in tone and subject matter, and all entertaining.

MAYOR OF THE ROSESby Marianne Villanueva

“Marianne Villanueva is a gifted story-teller with an unflinching eye. Her elegant stories take us on a powerful journey from the harsh realities of life in the Philippines to another kind of harsh reality in urban America.”
—Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dream Jungle

WAR OF THE CRAZIESby John Oliver Hodges

A young Florida woman joins a commune in upstate New York, and finds herself smack dab in the middle of a host of crazies.

THE BLUNDERby Joe Kilgore

Within every smart man, a stupid one lies in wait.
An aging advertising man loses his perspective when an insensitive boss, years his junior, reassigns his major account. Embarking on a monumental bender,
he sets in motion a particularly ill-conceived revenge that triggers an inexorable chain of life-changing events.

THE VOTING BOOTH AFTER DARKby Vanessa Libertad Garcia

A group of gay & lesbian Latino club kids plunge deep into the agonizing lows of anxiety and addiction throughout the 2008 presidential elections.

GINSENG AND OTHER TALES FROM MANILAby Marianne Villanueva

Villanueva's debut collection of probing, dreamlike tales about the Philippines during Ferdinand Marcos's dictatorship provides a haunting picture of the island's landscape and an intriguing glimpse into the minds and hearts of its people.

"As subversive in its simplicity as any truly American Buddhism, or as any truly feminine anything..." —Gail Wronsky

Winner of the 2003 Green Rose Prize

THE SLEEP HOTELby Amy Newlove Schroeder

The harsh lines and sentence fragments in Schroeder's hard-to-forget debut create collisions between the libidinal and the numinous: Struggling to get out/ from under the hood of the world, the poet compares her unsatisfied desire to Sailboats asleep in their slips, declaring I love you the way the ground loves the flame. Those phrases may begin to show the seriousness with which these taut poems take their goals: compressed yet raw, alert to the weights of words yet focused on emotion so strong it bends language all out of shape.

WE GROW OLDby Yu-Han Chao

Yu-Han Chao writes with delicacy and power. Her poems speak on many levels about life, relationships and personal nightmares. Her work flows from a mix of traditional Chinese culture, contemporary Taiwan and post-modern America. The resulting poems contain beauty and often wisdom. Many are worth reading over and over again. —Joe Farley

THERE ARE SEVEN NOTESby Sudha Balagopal

Can music really communicate emotions better than words? Is a person born with music embedded in his DNA? Could two souls bound by music ever find a connection outside of it? The seven stories in There are Seven Notes reveal the pervasiveness of classical music in Indian culture: an attempt once again to fathom the distance between life and art.

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